Did you ever die...

[justussix]

If its not too much to ask - how long did it take for your sternum alone to heal? Mine was merely dislodged (the cartilage) and can still bother the crap out of me sometimes.

That's pretty miraculous.

Sternum was probably the hardest part (pun not intended). I was off work and on driving restriction for six weeks. One can never appreciate just how much certain bones are depended upon until they are broken. It was held together with wires, and they are still in there. They look like bread ties in an x-ray. I slept in a recliner for a while because it was much easier than getting up from laying down. I had to learn how to get up as there is a recommended technique. I find I still do it out of habit.

That said, I think I'd take a nice clean sawn bone vs. what you had. I think bone heals easier than cartilage.

 

[amberpi]

Nothing as dramatic as what other people have written here, but when I was a child I almost drowned.

We were at the Jersey Shore. I have very vivid memories of feeling very calm and looking at the sand, under the water. I wasn't worried at all (and in my memory, I'm still breathing, even though I'm under water). Then my mother pulled me up, and I remember feeling like someone was sticking knives into me when I tried to breathe. I thought the air had gone bad and was hurting me. It was very frightening, but I didn't have to go to the hospital or anything. My mother barely remember the incident.

That's an amazing story, that feeling of calm. Thanks for sharing!

 

[MommyinHonduras]

Thank you for sharing this even though I can't imagine how scary that must have been. I feel for you. So thankful you had a doctor that would come to your home! I appreciate you sharing that you still tire easily. Makes me feel like I'm not alone.

. It is actually what brought me here. My MIL treated our family to our first Disney vacation a year after and I found this board while planning. <3. It is a frustration to be tired but so thankful to just be here still that I do dwell on it most days. There are still those days though....

 

[karensi]

amberpi, just wondering if you had the experience that many people speak of, which is seeing a white light or feeling as if you are being drawn to that light.
Also , I've heard that some people speak of "seeing" deceased family members or loved ones.
If it's not asking too much of you to share these experiences I'd love to hear any other details.
Thank you

 

[amberpi]

amberpi, just wondering if you had the experience that many people speak of, which is seeing a white light or feeling as if you are being drawn to that light.
Also , I've heard that some people speak of "seeing" deceased family members or loved ones.
If it's not asking too much of you to share these experiences I'd love to hear any other details.
Thank you

No and yes. I saw my grandmother at the old library I loved as a child and we talked. Some people will tell me it's all drug induced nonsense though. Maybe it is.

 

[wenrob]

amberpi, just wondering if you had the experience that many people speak of, which is seeing a white light or feeling as if you are being drawn to that light.
Also , I've heard that some people speak of "seeing" deceased family members or loved ones.
If it's not asking too much of you to share these experiences I'd love to hear any other details.
Thank you

I don't know if you'd call it dying or not but my stepmother was "down" for long enough that they almost didn't get her back. She talks about "the great cruise ship in the sky." She says she walked on a bridge that was in empty space and found herself on a glowing "cruise ship" filled with friends and loved ones who passed before her. Near death experience? Maybe. Drug induced? IMO likely. The thing about these stories is how do people know if they experienced them when they were "down" versus when they were just hanging on or brought back? Don't get me wrong, I would never question someone's personal experience, it's theirs alone but it's a something I wonder about.

 

[Magpie]

No, because if you die that means your dead. Now, my dad's heart stopped and they did CPR for 25 minutes before they got it completely restarted. He lived for several years after that. He didn't go around bragging that he had died, though. If it came up, he would talk about how amazing the paramedics, the doctors, and the nurses were.

So, is there a proper, Miss-Manners-approved, way to survive a near-death experience? Rules for exactly how and where and when to talk about it?

I think I must have missed the memo.

Sincerely, though, I'm glad your dad enjoyed several more years of life, and I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[Moxiepup]

I want to thank everyone who replied and to say I'm glad you made it.

My sister passed away last year, and I've been having a really difficult time coping with her loss. She had Ovarian cancer that had spread and she ended up getting sepsis. She was sedated and on a ventilator during her last days. During our early visits at this point, she was able to gently squeeze my hand, but later, it was hard to tell if she knew we were there or not. The doctors said there was nothing that could be done. Her body was shutting down and the only thing keeping her alive was the medicine to keep up her blood pressure and the ventilator. After many talks with the doctors, much soul searching and the desire to not prolong her suffering, we made the truly awful decision to let her go. I cry every time I have this memory of her. No family should ever have to go through this.

I tried to make her passing as peaceful I could. I played her her favorite songs that her chorus sang, and then put on a recording of birdsong, from her beloved Sapsucker Woods. I picked some lavender flowers (her favorite) and had them on her chest, so that she might be able to smell them, although when they removed the intubation tube, she continued to breathe through her mouth, so I'm not sure if she was aware of them or not. We told her we loved her and I held her hand until the end.

Hearing the stories of people who have experienced brushes with death, and had peaceful feelings regarding it, gives me some hope that she might have been able to experience something similar. I am truly thankful for your sharing.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I posted this on a similar thread recently...

very interesting. can you elaborate on the details of what you felt/saw in death?? or you can't really describe?? this stuff is fascinating to me.

I so appreciate you sharing your experience, and I'm glad to got to stick around here on earth and tell it I am fascinated by near death experiences. I'm a life long Catholic, I try to live by all the "rules" and all of that, I don't have a hard time believing in God, but as an adult do find myself having a harder and harder time with certain aspects of certain religions, mainly the idea of earth as being some sort of "score card". I just want to think of God as this force of unconditional love, but then religions make it sound more like you have to do everything perfectly to gain eternal life. It does comfort me to hear someone's personal experience that there was more beyond this life, and it wasn't scary

I have studied a lot about near death experiences for my own personal reasons. We could easily have our own thread just on NDE, but, briefly for this thread, there do seem to be some common themes that occur when someone has a NDE, as told by many researchers who have studied them formally. There seems to be a feeling of being out of the body and hearing and seeing things going on around the body, seeing colors and sights, and hearing sounds, which are beautiful and almost indescribable, but unfamiliar to us, seeing others we've known before, seeing events that happened in our lifetimes (often in rapid succession, ie "saw my life before my eyes"), learning things about life that were not well understood before this experience, meeting a "supreme being" and others similar to the supreme being, being told it's not your time yet and you have to go back, feeling suddenly back in the body, etc. Often people remember not wanting to leave but being told they have to.

Some take aways for me are that it's not a religious thing but more a spiritual thing, that what we do in this life does matter, as amberpi said, that we have long term connections with people and other spirits but we may not be aware of them in our lifetimes, that we can sometimes learn a lot about why things happened in our lives, and can change things about ourselves, and that it's not that there's a "score card", but that the purpose of this life seems to be to strive for a higher evolution of our souls, if that makes sense. Not trying to offend anyone who does not believe this line of thinking, just trying to say that those are some of the themes that seem to be commonly reported by the many people who've experienced NDE. Not everyone will have all of the same experiences, but usually they will have some form of some of the more common ones. It's an interesting subject to study, and there are lots of books on the matter. For those that it's happened to, it's usually life altering. Cardiologists were often the people who heard stories the most when people suffered cardiac arrest, then were brought back to life. They often recorded them. Those initial conversations were important, since with time, sometimes some of the memories faded a bit. There was also a doctor, a neurosurgeon, who wrote about his own NDE that was a fascinating read. I will see if I can find it again.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/neuroscientist-sees-proof-heaven-week-long-coma/story?id=17555207

http://www.newsweek.com/proof-heaven-doctors-experience-afterlife-65327

 

[Planogirl]

This is very interesting. I didn't die but they told me I came close to it. I was kept in a coma for a while due to a pulmonary embolism.

I dreamed (?) while in that coma. I kept going from room to room of some structure and also to other structures. It's hard to describe. I remember sensing that there was more above me but I don't know what that was. I don't remember being aware of others around me in real life but I was hot. My brother and son told me that my arms were heavily bandaged so maybe that's why? When they pulled me out of the coma and got me to breath on my own I remember walking away from the building down a long road with grass and forests on both sides.

These events do have a big effect on you or at least it did on me. I still can't quite process all of it.

Amberpi thanks for sharing. Also my heart goes out to everyone here who has dealt with this or have seen family members go through it.

 

[klmall]

My 'near death' experience happened very inconveniently when I was chaperoning high schoolers on a multi-week summer travel course in Michigan in the '70s. We camped through Canada and we were all bitten by black flies. I had to see a doctor because my bites were swelling up quite a bit especially on my neck and I was feeling miserable. He gave me sulfa pills which I had never taken before.

We then ferried over to Isle Royale to backpack for 5 days. I was fine until the first night when I crawled into my sleeping bag and thought I was having a nightmare. In my mind I was floating over the screened lean-to we were sleeping in but the students woke me up because I was calling for help. Several hours later I ended up on a boat anchored in the harbor near our lean-to. Despite giving me Benadryl and lots of water I was having a very hard time breathing. The vacationing medic on board without any equipment feared he would have to try a crude tracheotomy but they managed to signal someone and get me evacuated to a small hospital in Houghton, MI.

During the whole episode I thought I was floating, watching the scene above the lean-to and then the boat. I did see the proberbial 'tunnel of light' and felt very peaceful. I told the peple on the boat to call DH and tell him I loved him but I wasn't afraid or sad really.

When I got to the hospital my hearbeat was so high they couldn't measure it and my pulse couldn't be counted either. But 12 hours later it was all under control and a couple days later I was released. I have never taken sulfa since even though it was obviously a delayed reaction. I managed to take another flight and meet up with my group before we went north in Minnesota to canoe in the Boundary Water for a week (but that's another story!).

For a very long time after I felt wonderfully reassured by the whole experience but I have since read the scientific reasoning behind people seeing a tunnel of light etc. in these situations so I'm no longer so sure it meant something. But either way it was perhaps the most interesting experience I've ever had.

 

[karensi]

For a very long time after I felt wonderfully reassured by the whole experience but I have since read the scientific reasoning behind people seeing a tunnel of light etc. in these situations so I'm no longer so sure it meant something. But either way it was perhaps the most interesting experience I've ever had.

I'm really curious klmall, what is the scientific reasoning?
Thanks

 

[justussix]

I'm really curious klmall, what is the scientific reasoning?
Thanks

The scientific reasoning would be that the brain still has oxygen with which to function even after the heart stops. The heart is not an on/off switch for the brain. An oxygen starved brain does some interesting things. I was at elevation this past summer for the first time in ages, and not to brag - but I wasn't exactly in the best shape of my life. I started getting light headed and a blue haze over my field of vision.

It doesn't surprise me that a person in the process of dying but not yet fully deceased would have some crazy thoughts / visions in their head. From there confirmation bias takes over and people start hearing similarities between stories and assume a real event took place.

Even now I get migraine aura's, which I understand are related to my heart defect and surgery that I mentioned earlier. They appear swirling lights in my field of vision that last a few minutes then go away. No pain. Just the lights.

Interesting read:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/peace-of-mind-near-death/

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I think people underestimate how much near death experience has been experienced and studied. It goes back thousands of years - they've even found cave drawings that show some of the things people are still reporting today. Experiences are also universal - the same or similar things reported from all different areas of the world. I am not home right now but at home I have a large book that actually is a collection of all the studies that have been done on NDE. These aren't just things that have come up in the recent past, or in the western world, etc. As I said previously, many in the medical community have studied them because they happen to be there when they happen and they're the first people to hear about them when someone wakes up after NDE. I also linked above a neurologist's own experience.

Now I am certainly not trying to convince anyone of anything. People are free to believe whatever they want to believe. I'm just sharing my understanding. And my understanding is that when people die, they are already "out of their body" even sometimes before physical death has taken place (but not always). In other words, a part of the person leaves their body - some call it a soul; some call it energy, whatever - and that part of them can see what is happening with their body and around them, later recalling pertinent things like conversations and other details. Pain is not usually present unless and until the person "goes back" into their body. A couple of examples I remember reading about... One was a bicycle accident. Person remembers seeing a crumbled bicycle on the road and a person mangled as well. Realizes at some point it's himself. Feels no pain - until he gets pulled back into his body. Another example was a drowning victim. Woman was out of body as drowning was taking place, felt no distress or pain, etc. I don't know about anyone else but examples like these (and I've heard many more) give me hope that, upon death, there may be little pain and suffering, and that thought brings me peace. Which is why I'm sharing, so maybe others can hold onto that peace, as well.